Justin Frantz's INPP Research

I study Relativistic Heavy Ion Physics experimentally. The main point of this research is to create and study exotic states of nuclear matter. This helps us elucidate the theory of the nuclear force called Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). QCD is a theory of the nature of the fundamental force known as the strong force which binds nuclei and other elementary particles. In our experiments, we create nuclear matter that is under the most extreme conditions of high temperature and density ever achieved in a laboratory--temperatures of several trillion degrees are acheived which are in fact the highest temperatures known to exist anywhere in the universe!. This is acheived by colliding large ("heavy") nuclei at large
particle accelerators like RHIC
and the LHC
at energies comparable to the highest that are achievable even for
elementary particle collisions. Tens of thousands of particles are released in these collision in all directions shown being detected above.

To read more please scroll down...

Frantz Facilities and Experiments

Currently there are two large collider facilities in the world performing Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions: The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) located at Brookhaven National Laboratory, located on Long Island in New York, and the Large Hadron Collider located at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, located near Geneva Switzerland. My research involves experiments at both facilities, my main work so far has been on the PHENIX experiment at RHIC, and I am involved in an upgrade project to replace PHENIX called sPHENIX. At the LHC I have previously had an affiliation with the ALICE experiment and have also joined the ATLAS Experiment working within the Heavy Ion Working Group. My expertise in RHI Physics is in measurement techniques for studying production of very high energy photons and their correlations with other particles, primarily particles which come from very high energy quarks and gluons (called jets) which get knocked through, and out of, the dense quark-gluon-plasma created in each collision.